Todd Haynes with co-star Charlotte Gainsbourg on the set of I'm Not There
Writer-director Todd Haynes has been working for more than two decades to maximize the art of cinema. For him, the multisensory experience an audience gets from the big screen is not only the greatest way to tell a story, but even more so to connect on a level of emotion and soulfulness that sometimes defies tidy narrative and is more in line with the way we experience life. When that process is engaged to express the wonder and power of another art form as is the case with Haynes' latest project, I'm Not There the results are absolutely unforgettable.
I'm Not There was born of Haynes' immersion in Bob Dylan's music and life. Seeking to reinvent himself after the mammoth production of Velvet Goldmine, Haynes found himself being more affected by Dylan's songs than he ever had been before. Feeling that because Dylan himself had mastered the art of self-discovery and self-change so many times throughout his career, focusing on this mutability would prove empowering for Haynes and get him back to the kind of inimitable cinematic style he put aside for the more straightforward (yet highly lauded) Far From Heaven.
And so Haynes plowed forward with an idea rooted in having a group of actors portray Dylan's periods, words, beliefs, and sound in contrasting, often shocking ways. What was even more unbelievable than Haynes being able to pull this off was the fact that the whole shebang had the blessing of Dylan himself, who also granted the rare gift of the rights to his music. Added to the pot was the caliber of on-camera talent recruited for the project; the actors portraying a Dylan persona include critics' darling Christian Bale (3:10 to Yuma), Oscarฎ winner Cate Blanchett, 13-year-old newcomer Marcus Carl Franklin, the legendary Richard Gere, Brokeback Mountain's Heath Ledger, and British up-and-comer Ben Whishaw (Perfume).
Each of Haynes' previous films Far From Heaven, Velvet Goldmine, Safe, and Poison has been nominated for multiple Spirit Awards (with Far From Heaven winning five), proof of his incredible economy of means and ingenuity on a budget. Here, he discusses how I'm Not There proved difficult even for someone as skilled as he is at pulling multiple rabbits out of an under-funded hat, and how having the freedom to idealize and create that's demonstrated so brilliantly in his work is absolutely priceless.
Tell me about coming up with the initial premise of I'm Not There and the process you went through to transition from that kind of idealist into the practitioner who brings it to fruition.
There's that first, original moment where you're enthralled and smitten with the subject matter and the possibilities of making a film. That, for me, was this very initial phase in 2000 when I just found myself falling back into Dylan-world like heavily. It was driven by a weird need and hunger and insatiability and a kind of passion, I guess it's hard to find any other word where you just can't get enough of it and you're consuming it all. And then that, for me or for creative people, can often very quickly turn into this itch, this desire, to create in response to those feelings and make something of it, and that's where the concept of and the idea to make the film arose.
I did finish a draft that was produced in that kind of glow of feeling in 2000 before I put the project aside to do Far From Heaven. I then came back to it two years later to basically decide at that point to start over, really do thorough research, and start really writing the script. Although that first draft completely mirrors the feeling and ideas of the finished draft, it was a completely different sensibility that I found once I put myself to work. Basically, all that love gets turned into a job that you give yourself. It's certainly the best job in the world and I'm the luckiest person to have it and to be able to basically give it to myself. But then, I'm a worker, and as soon as that happens, I think that's the change, because writing the script is work. I mean, there's an idealism about what you hope to get, but at least the way I write or the way I research and then I write it's so rigorous! And I think a kind of terror sets in about wanting to do it right and really succeed and that drives you forward, but it doesn't have that same kind of sense of freedom, I think. It's just all of a sudden harnessed by the fact that it's work.
Did you have any trouble translating all of that individual work? What methods do you use to turn outward and convey the ideas churning in your own head to your producer, to your DP, and to the actors?
The first step of kind of externalizing it certainly happened in just the process of starting to write and piece it out in a long script, then bringing [co-writer] Oren Moverman into that process. Basically, that's the point where I probably could've finished the script myself, but I wanted to start sharing it; I felt like it was too big for just me to keep all alone with it in my house. Oren and I had a brief time of discussing this project for a stage production, so he was the best suited for that and I truly trust him and he's a great writer. But part of it was wanting to have more fun with it and share it; that wasn't hard, that was actually really kind of liberating in a way.
All the cues and the ideas and even the visual ideas are in the script and it's a matter of supporting and explaining and kind of interpreting the script to people, which was a feat unto itself because the script was virtually impenetrable. (Laughs) That would then be my job, to be an interpreter of the script for all kinds of different people and needs, financial needs to creative needs to acting needs.
I would imagine that even before you brought in Oren to help with the script that you had to externalize it to Dylan himself in order to get the rights to his music and permission to go forward with the project. What did you put on paper for him in that initial pitch?
Actually, the whole first paragraph of the thing I wrote to Dylan is in that New York Times article [printed on October 7, 2007]; they quoted it verbatim and it's amusing. I think they quote me saying it sounds like a sophomore thesis paper. (Laughs) Which was somewhat purposeful or at least it was the way I responded to all of the warnings on the part of Jeff Rosen, who is Dylan's manager, and Jesse, his son, in that first meeting I had with them about all the things to avoid saying that make Dylan recoil. Over-aggrandizing him and calling him "the voice of a generation," "genius" and blah blah blah all those things they told me to avoid. So I was left with this fairly veiled, kind of murky proposition.
But then, when it described the what were then seven separate characters one additional character than what we ended up with in the film those are very succinct; like two sentences describing each one, what the stories or the themes of those stories are and even as specific as saying, "The Woody character is at the very beginning and will be played by an 11-year-old black kid," and that Jude would be portrayed by an actress but Jude would actually resemble Dylan more than any of the other characters. There were things already at the very beginning that were very specific and very true to how the ultimate film would play out. So in the descriptions of the characters, it was extremely concise, succinct and not really very fleshed out, but the concepts were as clearly written as I could do at that time. And that's really all he had. It was on one sheet; Jeff said, "Just write it on one piece of paper," so it was very short.
Maybe this is a question more suited to [Haynes' longtime producer] Christine Vachon, but I want to also hear what you might say about it as well. You get Dylan's blessing, but then you have to go and raise the money for the film. Obviously there's marketability in the Dylan name and legend, but maybe not necessarily in an interpretation that involves six different personas.
Right. For sure!
So in addition to feeling responsible to your subject, how pressured did you feel by how marketable it was going to be and how to convince people to support you?
I really embarked on it with a kind of false optimism that I gained a little creative capital in the successes of Far From Heaven, the Oscarฎ nominations in ways, it was the most visible of any of my films and maybe the most praised. I thought, "Ok, I have a little cred here let me apply it to being as free as possible and as radical as possible and as fair to my idea and as uncompromising as I can be." And that's really what the script reflects once the script was done, it was pretty much, "That's it."
I had this extraordinary team of people headed by Christine. Even if they had the most dire questions about the script, they basically were there to support me and support "the vision". (Laughs) And they did and to a degree where there were times where it was such an uphill battle and seemed so impossible that I'd wished it would all collapse. In effect, I almost felt like, "Damn, I have these people who are so fucking loyal to me that they won't let it collapse! They keep fighting it against all the odds and then I'm the one who then has to do it!" And do it with less resources or under more constraints just because these guys are so wonderful. So it was completely twisted to be so completely supported beyond the point where you wanna be. (Laughs)
After the script was done, we went to actors which is pretty common to try to bolster support for the film and that process was incredibly exhilarating. Every actor we approached seemed to be dying to take part and there were even a lot of actors who wanted to take part that I couldn't find a place for in the film name actors who would've furthered the marketability of the film. So that felt great. And then we went to Cannes with it and were incredibly successful with European presales; we had very robust sales on the film. So all of that gave us sort of false hopes of how producible the film was, how financable it was. But then it was like, "Ok, let's hit the studios," and that became this slow process of pitch meetings with every major studio or classics division or independent producer and one after the next apologetically declining. So that was what was so tough in the end was the domestic market.
But after all of these years and a good body of movies, have you steeled yourself so that the kind of idealism that you talked about before isn't so beaten down when you face rejection like that?
Oh, yeah it doesn't really get me at my core; it's just so fatiguing because each time it's a possible deal or we all get very excited and then we're let down when it isn't. It doesn't really get to my creative core, but it's just exhausting and it is debilitating.
But yeah, you just keep going. I mean, the whole process of filmmaking tunnel vision in a way you just have to keep moving forward and you can't consider all of the potential pitfalls, all of the potential failures, to a degree that's alarmingly myopic.
We were considering every possible, any possible strategy that line producers who were involved in the film would offer up as ways of getting it done for the money, including shooting it in Romania, which was a serious plan for a little while. We even went to Romania to scout and when I think back now on how that could've been it was so hard to do it in Montreal in the end I just shiver that the will to just keep moving forward and considering every possible scenario is so blinding at a certain level because of that forward march.
Do you mind me asking how much the budget was?
The budget on paper I mean the budget we ultimately could get was about $17 million. It may have gone up due to financing fees and the cost of the money itself.
It's amazing that you got it done for that amount, especially with that body of actors.
I know!
I'm going back to Velvet Goldmine because of the obvious similarity in that it was the last music movie that you did. Were there things that you learned from its production that you would never, ever want to do again and then applied to I'm Not There? Or was it not necessarily as similar a situation as one might think just because they're both your music movies?
There were a lot of practical similarities in how dense and demanding and infinite it seemed the number of locations and requirements for the productions themselves to accomplish and just having such limited resources that you had to stand outside the box in so many ways. So in that way they were similarly ambitious and similarly trying productions and that would be an understatement. (Laughs)
Then there's the question of putting the music into film and how you get music to be part of your movie rather than it just being in the background. I know that's a lot of what you're attempting in I'm Not There trying to visualize the feeling of these songs. Was there anything that you had learned before or something totally new that you wanted to try in terms of applying a visual sense to an aural piece?
Again, it's pretty similar to Velvet Goldmine where the songs were part of the script from the very beginning; they determined the way the narrative would be told and in this case they had very specific relationships to the different stories. That meant that some songs would be production pieces that we would have to create cover versions of; in the production of the film, actors would literally be performing the song or sometimes cameo musicians who would be creating the songs would appear in the film and that's a step you obviously have to deal with first. Then there were places I knew I wanted original Dylan recordings and then there were places where I knew we could have covers of Dylan's songs that would serve more as background or used more like score stuff we could define in post-production and not have to worry about before production began or in pre-production.
Similar to Velvet Goldmine, I worked with Randy Poster and it was this wonderful opportunity to elicit all kind of young, contemporary artists or artists from the time and create little supergroups where we would literally cast the groups with young and old musicians like we did in Velvet Goldmine. It's almost like revitalizing the music for today's world with one arm back to the past and one arm in the present and creating this life in the music that hopefully is something that people feel when they see the film. And they see what we used to make that music and those traditions and music feel vital and prescient.
Again, there's that ever-present marketability factor, so I presume that this makes it all the more accessible and commercial.
Sure.
But in a good way, right?
Well, yeah!
I mean, I imagine you would never acquiesce to use a musician that you didn't feel was right.
No, no. Exactly. And what was so even more so than with Velvet Goldmine which felt like we got to pick from everybody we loved and wanted to work with in this case it was even more so because it's Dylan and there almost isn't a band out there to whom you could say, "Would you want to do a Dylan cover, your own choice or pick from these songs?" and they wouldn't wanna take a stab at it. Even when they're not necessarily associated with folk music or folk rock or a particular; bands like Sonic Youth who'd never covered Dylan before would give us one of the most beautiful covers in the film.
In terms of production, how do you juggle the logistics of prepping, then shooting and then cutting essentially six or seven different films at one time? How did you break it all down? Were they all set up completely unto themselves? Were you cutting as you shot?
No, I never cut as I shoot; I really need that complete separation. They're such completely different modes of thinking. And I love going back to the dark room after the crazy external wildness and military kind of mentality of a shoot. It's so great to go back in a quiet room with like two people! (Laughs)
But yeah, because of all of the challenges of the separate stories which really were like separate films and not just because of the actors and their availability we had to work a schedule that worked around those limits. Also there were the location requirements of the stories, which put us in different places for different stories more rural settings for the Billy story and the Woody story and more urban settings for the Jude story and the Robbie and Claire story. So it was a scheduling juggernaut; it was completely challenging in that way.
And then it was pretty much like a moving train. We started with Richard Gere and the Riddle story, which was creating a whole little world in the eastern townships outside of Montreal, and then segued into Woody, which was also rural settings and train locations. Then it was like the train never stopped as soon as Woody was done, Cate was on and it was like, "Go!", doing all that stuff back-to-back, then Robbie and Claire and then Jack and we finished with Arthur for the end.
It was all hard and I do love having some time with actors before shooting with them, even just have dinner and hang out and just feel like we can just sort of sense each other's presences before we're on set... But it's all about preparation. When you have that kind of a schedule, everything is about prepping and being as absolutely thorough as you possibly can. And that's not just in terms of finding the best locations and discussing how they get dressed and styled and the costumes and hair and clothes and everything... It's such a detailed, determined project of the period and of the Dylan references and all of those things, so I was doing the same thing with all the actors in advance, giving them all of the material that I used for researching the film.
I make all these little gifts for the actors, it's like their fun packages of material, from CD mixes of their songs for their stories to books of images from their stories that include all the stuff from Dylan but also the kind of cinematic and historical references that we're playing with. Anything where you just simply hear Dylan being interviewed, like in 1965 for Ben or Dylan talking in 1966 for Cate even those are so different and then to live recordings or documentaries where you see him in those times. That's great for actors; it's really concrete stuff and they can kind of travel through that stuff in any various they choose. Every actor approaches their advance work differently. So it's all about the prep when you have that kind of a tight shooting schedule.
Wrap it all up by telling me what you would say to storytellers out there who also want to do their own particular take on a moment of history, a person in history, a feeling, a song, whatever it is something that's already been out there before and has its own presence, its own life, but they want to give it their own take on it, just the way that you did with this. How can they not be afraid to be new with it, even while they're borrowing from what was already there?
The thing that I just think is so important to remember and so ultimately exciting about our medium is that it's a visual medium. It's a musical medium. It's a medium that isn't really about making cognitive sense or telling stories with words. It's just really about telling stories in more abstract, intuitive, and emotional ways. And when you are looking at a subject whose contributed something unique to the world, that's such an amazing opportunity to find what the colors, shapes, feelings, aura of that work is and then try to find a cinematic equivalent to really putting that into the world. So you're really using the medium you're not just using dramatic form, A-B-C, a kind of arc formation, for telling every single story because every story is supposed to have these emotional hits at this point or highs and lows at these points. The uniqueness of the subject should determine the shape and the feeling of what your film ultimately becomes. It's such a wasted opportunity to not fully indulge in that and not try to stretch the form to try to match at some level what you think is unique about your subject.
Not to mention what's unique about yourself as well.
Yeah! Exactly. That's what all the decisions that you make and what you choose to include and exclude ultimately refer back to is you. But usually, you're so blinded by what you're trying to convey... I always find that what's the most unique about certain filmmakers and their work is the thing they see the least. (Laughs) They don't notice it they're always struggling for something and what they end up doing that's so them, the thing that's so special about them, they often can't really see.
